I actually thought about this at Halloween time, but Scrooge’s experience with the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future makes this topic just as timely. A sales ghost is a departed salesperson’s trail of lost opportunities and at-risk accounts—a very scary proposition for sales management.

How do you feel when a salesperson leaves? You shouldn’t be surprised since 30 percent of the workforce changes jobs annually.
You would have to be concerned about revenue repercussions—how much a departure will cost in lost opportunities and at risk accounts. When you figure that conventional recruiting techniques typically take about nine months to get a replacement up to speed, that’s 75 percent of an annual revenue goal—ouch! For a small sales force, the math is cataclysmic.

If you have a large sales organization and are thinking about spreading the departed’s quota and accounts to make up the difference, congratulations on overburdening and destroying your remaining sales force’s morale. It could initiate an exodus of salespeople.

Truth be told, the vast majority of employers are caught totally off guard and unprepared to deal with the disappearance of salespeople. And while misery loves company, there’s a very easy way to get you out of this undesirable club.

Build a Sales Bench
By its nature, conventional replace-when-needed recruiting causes a lag time for the sales organization that makes it difficult, if not impossible, to make revenue goal. Yes, it works for the rest of the company, because those people don’t have to deal with rejection. And that’s the huge difference.

Instead of reactively authorizing HR to start hunting and praying for candidates who can and will sell, you need a proactive process for eliminating revenue valleys (as well as cash flow issues) caused by departing salespeople. That requires building a sales bench—a pool of pre-qualified candidates. So when a salesperson announces they are leaving, you can hire someone who can and will sell and was recently interested in working for you. You can slash the nine-month lag time dramatically!

Building a sales bench is not difficult or costly. It’s a matter of “keeping your bait in the water.” Start with quarterly requisitions in print and electronic media. From the first couple of placements, you can adjust frequency based on response.

The next step is critical—candidate screening. It’s a huge mistake to rely solely on a resume, references and interviews. Many will look like George Clooney and sell like Woody Allen (no offense to this terrific jazz clarinetist).

When you use the right objective assessment tool, you’ll know with 92 percent certainty if a candidate can and will sell. By the way, this approach has a positive side effect—sales go up about 30 percent.

If you have questions or need help getting started, call or email me: 952-983-8882; tslattery@slatterysales.com.

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Feel free to forward this to a colleague who wants to optimize revenues and margins.